2013 Human Security Report

11 March 2014

THE FOCUS OF 2013 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT IS THE GROWING DEBATE OVER WHETHER THE LONG-TERM THREAT OF VIOLENCE—WAR, TERRORISM, HOMICIDE— HAS BEEN DECREASING OR INCREASING WORLDWIDE.

For some the answer seems clear. In February 2012, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that today’s world has become, “more dangerous than it has ever been.” Similar beliefs are widely held throughout the strategic community. There, however, is little hard evidence to support them.

During 2012—the most recent year for which there are data—the number of conflicts being waged around the world dropped sharply, from 37 to 32. High–intensity conflicts have declined by more than half since the end of the Cold War, while terrorism, genocide and homicide numbers are also down.

And this is not simply a recent phenomenon. According to a major 2011 study by Harvard University’s Steven Pinker, violence of all kinds has been declining for thousands of years. Indeed Pinker claims that, “we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence.”

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined has won Pinker widespread critical acclaim for its scope, originality and scholarship. But some of its factual assertions, and the arguments used to support them, have been subject to sustained—and sometimes deeply hostile—criticism.

Critics have disputed Pinker’s two core assertions—that the current era is unprecedentedly peaceful, and that the earliest human societies had dramatically higher rates of deadly violence than those of today. Against Pinker they argue that the twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history, while the early human societies were extraordinarily peaceful.

Part I of the 2013 Human Security Report—The Decline in Global Violence: Evidence, Explanation and Contestation delivers the most comprehensive analysis to date of this critically important debate.

Part II of the Report reviews the data on recent changes in global and regional trends that track the incidence and deadliness of organized violence.

The Report can also be accessed on the Human Security Research Group’s website and will be available from Amazon.com in both hard copy and Kindle formats by mid-March.

Research for, and publication of, the Human Security Report was made possible by generous support from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, and the One Earth Future Foundation.

About the Human Security Research Group
The Human Security Research Group (HSRG) is an independent research centre affiliated with Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, Canada.

The HSRG tracks global and regional trends in organized violence, their causes and consequences. Research findings and analyses are published in the Human Security Report, Human Security Brief series, and the miniAtlas of Human Security. HSRG publications have received major coverage in the international media and are regularly cited by national governments, international agencies, and NGOs, as well as the research community.